


Fortress in the Woods

by thatdragonchic



Series: Cabins and Secrets [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, M/M, MacSheriff, Mentions of Suicide, a little vacation time, and heart to hearts i guess, bi!mac, jasper reveals some of his past, mentions of birds being shot, they're at the macgyver cabin in the woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 16:57:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19891222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdragonchic/pseuds/thatdragonchic
Summary: Mac takes his boyfriend Jasper to his grandfathers cabin in the woods, and it brings up some unsavory memories of his past before covert ops for Jasper.the two find themselves discussing family and sexuality and some memories by the lake side(part 1 of a series of vignettes (if you can call them that) of them talking while in this cabin in the woods)





	Fortress in the Woods

There’s a lingering sorrow in his heart as he makes his way through the wood and up the path, finding himself staring up at the trees and expecting a fortress upon him- a 3 story house with the cone roofs, and the big windows. Three chimneys, because of the different rooms with the fireplaces. He expects there to be big, black cars in the driveway, and the one red convertible that his mother had, left there in the driveway, only to be taken on sundays. His breath catches a bit as he hears the crack of the wood beneath his feet and his eyes spring to alertness, looking around the room, expecting to see something horrid.

He felt 15 again, trapped in his helpless, gangly body, thinner than his parents wanted him to be, his muscle lithe but firm. 

“You okay?” Mac asks and Jasper nods.

“I’m fine…” he says, zoning back to reality, looking back at where the camp parking lot. 

“Sorry we can’t take the car out here, I know you said you were tired-” and he hears Mac talking, still talking and he knows Mac is concerned, he vaguely hears himself saying it’s okay, and he can’t quite focus as he fears what isn’t there. Like a child in the dark. 

And suddenly he’s fifteen again, in a body that was too thin. Muscle that was lithe, but strong. 

Him and his father are walking from the house, and his father hands him an unloaded gun. “Think you can load this for me?” 

He knew how by then. He knew how to load the gun, he knew how to shoot. He wasn’t quite perfect yet- not like he was with his bow and arrow. Not like he was with a knife. He loads the gun, and he hands it back to his father, or at least he had tried. His father laughs, patting his arm.  _ “See that bird up there?” _

_ “Yeah.” _

_ “You’re going to shoot it. Perfect shot.” _

_ “Now?” _

_ “Now. And you only get one shot, one chance.” _

He remembers his chest feeling tight, as he aimed the gun at the finch. He remembers his much smaller arms, taking form, two hands on the gun, eyes set, he remembers praying that he didn’t miss- praying that he doesn’t have to find out what happens to him if he did. And he pulls the trigger, the bullet going right through the bird, gruesome in every way as the tree is painted red, as it’s guts are torn from its body, as its song dies almost instantly. It doesn’t suffer. It just goes. 

_ “Grandpa would be proud of you. And why not collect your prize?” _

_ “What?”  _

_ “We can stuff the bird, fix the feathers… Oh come on, what’s with the tears? You’re stronger than that.” _

_ “There’s so much blood… like uncle Evan…” _

_ “Shit,” his father had murmured, as if he hadn’t realized the trauma. “Shit kid, you know, it’s just blood. Death just happens-” _

_ “I killed it, that didn’t just happen.” _

_ “Was livin a miserable life anyways. Uncle Evan killed himself because he was depressed-” _

“Jessie?” Mac asks and Jasper looks at him, finding they’re stopped in front of a house. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Jasper nods. “Just… the woods remind me of home.”

“You really miss Ohio that much?” Mac teases, taking his hand and Jasper laughs, somber.

“Sometimes, I just miss it,” he says softly. He thinks of telling Mac  _ when I was fifteen my uncle evan killed himself and I found him bleeding in the woods- or at least they told me he killed himself, because he was sick. And three days after the funeral, my dad took me out with a gun and made me shoot a bird, and all i could think was that the bird was my uncle and that somehow I’d killed him. _

_ “You shouldn’t cry over birds- Jason, listen to me, you’re stronger than some little bitch, crying over a bird. You think birds are the same as people? Do you?”  _

“The house is nice,” Jasper says as he looks up at the trees, at the birds that sing there, and he keeps seeing them, one by one, getting shot. Their guts spilling out of the bullet hole, the puff in their chest. He thinks of the bird that he’d shot and that his father had stuffed and left in his room. He wonders if it’s still there, all those years later. What did they ever do with it? His room, his stuff? 

Mac nods, and he knows something is off, Jasper can tell from his face. “Hey-”

“You know what would be nice? Something cold to drink while we get settled in. So why don’t we go inside, and i’m going to make us some margaritas.”

Mac laughs at the sudden change of mood, at Jaspers anticipation to get him settled with drinks. “We’re going to be drunk before dinner.”

“And who said barbecuing drunk isn’t a whole lot of fun?” 

“Everyone who’s barbecued drunk and probably burnt themselves to a crisp.”

“That’s not new to you, besides, worst case scenario we just end up being drunk on the bedroom floor together.”

Mac rolls his eyes, kissing him before fishing out the keys and opening the door to the cabin. Jasper brings in their bags with Mac, taking it to the bedroom. Their drinks are long forgotten as they stumble over bags and unpack. Jaspers mind recentered as he escapes the outside of the house, too eerily familiar to his past, and yet the inside was so boldly his present. Pictures of Mac when he was young hung on the hall walls, Jasper pointing at a picture of him and Bozer. 

“You were an ugly kid,” he teases and Mac smacks his chest.

“You probably weren’t a peach either.”

“I was always very pretty.”

“Yeah okay.”

Jasper kisses his cheek, pulling him so their sides are pressed together, Jasper under his arm. “I was. And you love me all the more for being so graciously beautiful. You should thank my mother next time your in a church.”

“Your mom is an entity in the church?”

“My moms dead, Mac.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry-”

Jasper laughs it off, kissing him. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago now.”

“Was she sick?”

_ Our family has a history of depression, she wanted to hide it, she didn’t want you guys to know, to be strong for her kids.  _ “She had depression but… she didn’t want us to know.”

Mac nods, and Jasper can see he doesn’t quite believe him. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

“We’re not here to talk about my mom. Or my family…”

“Why not? This place reminds me of my grandfather, everytime I’m here… I just you know, remember him.”

“And I want you to remember him. I want to hear all your stories about him. I want you to tell me.”

Mac smiles, taking Jasper by the arms, pulling him close. “You know, I want to hear your stories too… the real ones. No matter how bad.”

Jasper smiles. “And maybe I’ll tell you.”

They lay on the beach by the water, and Jasper dips his nose into Macs skin. When he was 17, they went to Paris, and on the banks of the river two young men kissed. He had only been so young, and so curious, a feeling of a long known fact rose in his chest, but squandered as his mother sneered at what she deemed unacceptable. 

_ Weakness  _ her and her father instilled in him.  _ Love is weakness. Homosexuality is weakness. Do you want to be weak like them? You’re so strong Jason, and what- you’ll give all your strength to another man, to prove what? To say what? An Argent is strong. A hunter has no weakness, no faults.  _

Jasper takes a deep breath, memorizing Macs scent, feeling his breath under his hand as his stomach slowly falls and rises, once cool skin warmed by the setting sun now. The smoke from the barbecue still scenting the air. The food was probably still hot from the muggy heat that clung to them in the most unshakable manner. He never felt weak when he was with Mac, he never saw weakness in love, he only ever felt more determined to be stronger, to protect those around him. He wanted to protect Julius. He wanted to protect Mel, and Kaori, and Chickie. He wanted to protect  _ Mac _ , and his team. He wanted to be strong for them, he’d take a bullet for them. He’d stand in the face of the worst evils for them. 

“When I was 18,” Jasper finds himself saying before he could stop, grabbing Macs attention. “I had a fiancee. She was… really pretty. Mari-Ellen, she was strong, she was determined. Probably would’ve made cute babies together.”

“You were engaged?” Mac whispers.

“Not by choice. It was an arrangement. Between our families. She was 18 too, they wanted her to marry my brother, but apparently she saw me training and was determined to marry me. She loved me, I think. In that weird cold way that people loved each other at home. Sometimes she’d kiss me, and I remember thinking it was the oddest feeling. I remember thinking that I didn’t like kissing her at all.”

Mac lets himself smile when he sees that Jasper is smiling, that he knows it sounds silly. 

“You know… I wanted to love her, to make my parents proud. We didn’t get married, not until we were 22, that was when the date was set. I don’t remember why.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah… I remember the summer before, I had gone to Paris with my family, and I saw these two boys kissing by the river, and they did everything in their power to make sure I knew I could never have… that. That love made me weak, that marriage was a power move, and that you love whoever it is you get stuck with. That family was everything, but our families power structures only worked when our wives were stronger than our men. I don’t know why she picked me, maybe she did end up marrying my older brother. I don’t know… But, you know, we left Paris 3 hours later, to a secluded home in Marseilles. I remember sitting on the river bank behind the house with my cousin Allison and my brother, and my brother told me that I was stupid if I felt that way about boys. That I wasn’t like that.

“I remember he told me that I wasn’t born that way, and that I could never be that way. They all told me how I was supposed to be, and I just could never stop thinking about it- I never saw anything of the world, of other people. I couldn’t watch TV or read books that weren’t pre-approved by my parents. I couldn’t go to town or stores. I only ever left when hunting-”

“Hunting?”

“It’s what my psycho family called kill missions.”

“Oh… Jess..”

“When Julius told me… that people are gay, that doesn’t change anything about them, I cried. I’d never heard anyone say things like that before. Everyone told me I was wrong.”

“You’re not wrong…”

“I know. I have you, and it’s never felt wrong.”

Mac smiles. “Really?”

“Really. Does it feel wrong to you?”

“No… I never… I never had a real relationship with a man before, not like it is with you,” Mac admits. “I hid it in the army… pushed that side of my bisexuality that rang every time I saw an attractive man down, and down. I let the side that saw women and rang thrive, said things that were maybe a bit suspicious like how saying i love you to my friends was weird, or how I could never really hug them.”

“I know that feeling…”

“It just feels like everyone would know, would see right through me.”

“Like everyone would figure out your secret.”

“Did you date any guys before you left?”

“No… I never even let myself think about it. Except when I was alone…. Deep in the woods around my house. I would sit by the waterfall and think of those two guys by the river in Paris, and I wondered if maybe… if in any world that wasn’t mine, a man would find me attractive enough to kiss, or nice enough to fall in love.”

“Is that why you left?”

“No…” Jasper laughs a bit. “No… I guess that was the start of me… striving for more knowledge about the world outside. My parents kept me blind because they wanted me to be the strongest, they didn’t want me to ever chance being weak, or wanting to go off. To live in a world where I could be gay. They wanted me to be their prized possession. Their best hunter… I don’t know if it was because they were afraid of what being Gay would do to me, or because that was always the plan… the destiny they saw in me.”

“Maybe… but all that awful made you the best agent in the field, the strongest person I know. Not that, that excuses anything but… maybe the outcome makes you a diamond in the rough.”

Jasper smiles, kisses him gentle. “Maybe.”

“If it makes you feel better, my grandfather probably would have a heart attack if he knew I was bi and dating a man.”

“Only a little. We’re in this boat together.”

“Always. We’re co captains now. No going back, or the whole ship goes down.”

Jasper laughs, kissing him again before getting up and stretching. “Come on, lets go shower, make some coffee. I saw a wicked movie collection inside and would like to scavenge.”

Mac nods, taking Jaspers hands and pulling himself up. “You bet. Some of them belonged to my dad, he used to love movies from what I remember about him.”

“Yeah?”

Mac nods, grabbing the towel. “He had great movie taste. When he wasn’t making me read textbooks and learn physics or chemistry, he would let me watch movies. What he called classics, even if, looking back on it, were not classics or even really great movies.”

“Hey, classics are classics, great or not.”

“That’s flawed reasoning.”

“Only a little.”

“Come on, come show me the movies.”

And they go inside, shower together, and find themselves on the couch with margaritas and clueless in on the tv. Mac shows Jaspers his moms initials scribbled inside the cover and it feels coveted, for a moment. Like something only they knew and understood together. And Jasper feels more at peace, knowing that maybe he and Mac weren’t terribly different. Not as much as he had thought. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I always appreciate every reader!   
> I hope you enjoyed the story.   
> Comments are not expected but always appreciated! Thank you so much


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